Howdy folks! As some of you know, I am kind of a film/director junkie, and I love to shoot and edit short films. But I’ve been working on a new undertaking as of late, and it brings forth new challenges. One of these challenges has me completely flustered, and I’m hoping that one of you may be able to help.
The problem:
We have been recording multiple 50 min+ chunks of video, that go along with a single audio commentary. The commentary is specific to things that happen on different cameras, so my question is, is there any way in any program to watch all 5+ clips play back, and make edits to thee timeline as I get to certain parts? Basically, what I want is 5 seperate sections of video on a timeline, and 5 playback windows allowing me to watch them all, then be able to stop, cut, and carry on the process.
Usually, what is done is you preview the various clips, slice and dice so you have the parts you want and then move them into a media bin of sorts. Repeat.
Taking the audio from the video is no big deal depending on the program.
Here’s what I do in Sony Vegas Pro:
After I get all my big clips into the session and have saved, I will mute all the unwanted tracks(video and audio). I will then make a new video track above video track 1 and one audio track below track 1. I will watch track 1. Any keeper video I will move UP. Any audio I want, I will move DOWN that’s not tied to video being needed.
Delete what I don’t want from Track 1.
Repeat with the others. It’s not super efficient but it works well for me.
If I need to do a commentary channel, I just hook up an audio interface, select the mic I want and go from there.
Very old school. But since it’s an NLE, I never lose anything.
What are you doing now? If you’re asking stuff like this, I just get the impression you’ve been at least doing something for a while and know at least the fundamentals of what you’re doing or trying to accomplish.
But, Sony Vegas can let you do mutli-camera editing. I don’t know how many angles you can handle at once but I know it can do 6. I’m usually working with 4 angles though but I did one with 6. You just hit the number of the camera you want and it will do it on the fly. Audio is a whole other beast. I use this method when I’m editing music videos. Since the timeline is linear, once everything is synced up, the rest flows nice and smooth. Usually one of the video sources is the master audio but not always.
I’ve gone from being able to manage clips from filming to post, and been able to adjust accordingly. I just was hoping there was an easier way to do it, as I had considered your way, and didn’t want to put 3-+ hours into an hour long video (although it’s what I expected coming in :P).
Not that I’ve had a huge amount of success exporting my encoded videos, but Cinelerra, Avidemux and LiVES I believe all support multiple video streams within a single project for editing on a Linux system. I think if you have all the correct software requirements (all free) beforehand then these should spit out suitable video, with the right editing capabilities. They aren’t too horrible to use either, excepting the fact of course that they run on Linux which may preclude some people from the get-go.